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Small scale solar energy subsidies set to end

The UK government has finally realised that solar power is nearly useless in the winter. Everyone else has known this all along, but better late than never. The BBC reports:

Subsidies for many new solar farms are to end under plans being published by the government.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is consulting on plans that would see subsidies for some new solar farms close by 2016. The government says the move is necessary to protect consumers.

The solar industry said subsidies were one of the cheapest ways that the government could meet its climate change targets.

Under the government’s plans, so called “small scale” solar farms will no longer qualify for support under a key subsidy mechanism – the renewables obligation – from April next year.

New projects that receive the subsidy may also see the level cut.

‘Blank cheque’

Energy Secretary Amber Rudd said: “Our support has driven down the cost of renewable energy significantly.
“As costs continue to fall it becomes easier for parts of the renewables industry to survive without subsidies.”

She told the BBC’s Today programme: “We can’t have a situation where industry has a blank cheque, and that cheque is paid for by people’s bills.
“We can’t have a system, which we’ve had up to now, where there is basically unlimited [subsidy] headroom for new renewables, including solar.”

She conceded that subsidies to the nuclear industry, such as those planned for Hinkley Point, would exceed those going to solar, but she said that nuclear provided “a different type of electricity”.

“In the winter, at the moment, solar doesn’t really deliver much electricity,” she said.

Politicians are particularly lousy at playing Engineer. Also particularly lousy at playing Economist or even Business Manager. Why they consistently think they can despite obvious evidence to the contrary can only be the enormous ego and arrogance needed to “run for office” and believe you know more than anyone else.

With that said:

At least your politicians seem able to learn by running into the walls of reality. Ours seem to bounce off such walls and just back up and try it again…

I just wish we could find away to avoid such “on the job training” by banging into things; especially on the front of the economy. How many hundred times have whole nations been brought to ruin by the ideology of Socialism and how many variations of it have already been tried by the wall-bangers? Yet the USA is presently headed toward our own “This time for sure!” moment.

The “urge” to “redistribute” often first manifests as taxes on things they wish to “discourage” and subsidy to things they desire to “encourage”. The implicit assumption being that politicians know better what ought to be bought, or not, than the folks spending their own money in a free market. It is never so; yet the wall-bangers just keep on doing it… Sigh.

But for now, at least, one of yours seems to have seen a tiny bit of light and decided to stop banging their head on that particular wall while they go look for another one.

If the reserves available to frack in the UK are even half of whats claimed, the time scale of energy security will be such that it would amount to 2 political careers. Or from a political view, eternity 🙂

So its a foregone conclusion that the energy subsidy buffet is not being replenished. But given that ‘Money’ has always sought to ponce off the taxpayer, it’d make a game to try and guess the next ‘Cause’ that will necessitate corporate welfare on a large scale.

I noted the comment from the solar industry saying that rooftop solar was one of cheapest ways that the government could meet its climate change targets. I have two problems with this statement (beside that its not true), and they are that an Australian productivity commission report estimated that rooftop solar in Australia (plenty of sunshine) costs about A$1000/tonnes of co2 abatement, and to say “the cheapest ways for the government..” Is tricky, because here in Oz at least, the electricity generators pay the solar subsidy that supports this racket, not the government.